Rick's Past Midnight
by April-in-the-chair
Summary: Set post-film One-shot. . Rick sits in his cafe, gets a bit drunk, and has a meaningful conversation with a wineglass. Rated T for alcohol and copious amounts of angst. My first fic, please read and review!


The cafe is mercifully dark, and only the hum of flies breaking the silence in the hot, close air. The well worn bar shines dully in the rotating searchlight, winking painfully bright at Rick. He doesn't mind the flies. They seem to be a permanent fixture in this godforsaken place, another part of the background, like the beggars, the dust in the gutters, the unforgiving sun. Maybe even like himself.

Rick smiles. He is drunk.

Maybe this city has turned him into an inanimate object. It makes sense, in an alcohol-infused sort of way. As the city has slowly infiltrated his body, leeching into him until he breathed it and sweated it and even bled it, he's stopped feeling. Well, sort of. He's become the efficient nervous center of the café, controlling it, but a part of it. It was a good feeling to be part of it. He isn't a complicated creature at the café. He does his job, and watches his customers drink. He is part of the system, catering to the winos and wastrels without touching a drop himself.

Well, there are exceptions to every rule, he thinks. He stares contemplatively down at the alarmingly empty glass clutched tight in his hands. But it was a special occasion.

_But, _he tells the glass, _But back to being an inanimate object_.

_That's ridiculous, _the glass says wearily.

_No, no. It works out,_ he insists. _Look, maybe I'm not strictly inanimate, but I'm the closest any person gets. Maybe I'm more like a plant, or some tiny, cave dwelling-animal. Or one of these flies._

_But then how do you explain _this_ whole fiasco? _Asks the glass, looking smug. The question of how a wine glass can look like a wine glass and also looks smug gives Rick a headache when he thinks about it. He doesn't think about it for long.

_Well I wasn't always inanimate, obviously,_ Rick shrugs_. I just became so when I came to this hellhole. Before Casablanca I was a perfectly reputable human being. Almost. Didn't I say that already? _

_You thought it, and I wasn't listening._ Demurs the glass. _But you still didn't answer my question._

_Well I was getting to that, wasn't I? _Rick narrows his eyes, wondering if anyone would notice if one of the good wine glasses went missing.

The wine glass refrains from comment.

_It was because- because when I was not quite yet inanimate I trusted her._ Rick bites his lip. _I trusted her with me. Well, sort of. It fits with the metaphor. So I gave her a bit of my young, human self. And when she- after, she still had that part of me, with her. _Inside _of her._

The wine glass scoffs, the impossibility of which is lost upon the very drunk Rick.

Rick is wounded. _Really! We were- she was-_

_Yes, that's very nice, but how about we jump forward a bit, alright? She comes into the café-_

_And I heard that song, and suddenly it's like I've been resuscitated, like my heart's beating again, and there's that sudden rush of blood to the head and the sensation of falling-_

_Inanimate object, remember? _The glass doesn't have much time for Rick's swooning.

_But the song! 'As Time Goes By', Ha! A glaring reminder of my own mortality, of the memories that still stay in my sentimental, human mind. You objects don't feel the time passing, _The glass protests, muttering about rust, but Rick goes on, _but for me every day took me farther away from Paris, from her. And then I hear the song again, and _she's _there, looking at me like that, and it's like the piece of myself is still there, too. And I can feel my old affections and sentiments flooding back, and those old feelings attach themselves to me like a cancer, and suddenly I'm weak, and I don't know what to do, and now everything, everything I've built for myself here, everything I've done is falling apart with one glance from her, with those eyes…_

The glass muses for a moment. _Y'know, you're pretty talkative when you open up to people. Well, things, at least. You should do this more often._

Rick places the glass back onto the bar, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. The glass is affronted. Rick leans across the bar and puts his head down in his hands. He groanes.

_But is it really that bad?_ The glass has a thought. Glasses only have these sorts of thoughts in sensational fiction, animated children's movies, and the presence of the highly inebriated. The glass was eager to share it.

_What? _Asked Rick, with only the usual unfriendliness.

_IT doesn't seem so bad, the whole 'feelings' thing._

_Oh please. _Rick is disgusted at the glass, or his subconscious, or whoever has planted such an idea in his mind.

_No, because you say that you don't like it. But without being animate at some point you would never have met her in the first place, or have done anything, really. No Casablanca for you. No Rick's American café. No getting very drunk and hallucinating conversations with plucky wineglasses. _The wineglass has the air of one firmly on the top of a very large mountain, trying to convince the rest of his party to come up and enjoy the view. It is maddening.

_No. _Rick buries his head even deeper in his arms. _I'm not- you- you can't say that!_ Behind his arms Rick squints his arms accusingly._ That makes even less sense than the rest of this damned conversation! _

_I don't know, Mr. Rick, maybe you should stay off of the liquor. _Says the glass, who is maybe Rick, or maybe someone else entirely by now. Rick, in a very animate gesture, gives up. He sinks into deep, warm sleep, where his Old Ghosts stay ghosts, and never talk to him. It is a relief.


End file.
